


How It's Good

by Emnot



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: F/M, Fingerfucking, Jealousy, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-22
Updated: 2013-03-22
Packaged: 2017-12-06 03:58:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/731225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emnot/pseuds/Emnot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"The pictures in his head that he's been ignoring slide into focus again and he thinks fingers, heat, skin, Liv's cropped dark hair tangled in Alex's slim hand. Olivia coming underneath another body. Olivia coming, in general. His partner, who still has a gun holstered at her hip and is looking at his face as he thinks about her coming. Maybe she'll shoot him for it and this can all be over."</p>
<p>E/O; implied A/O. Because jealous!Elliot is everyone's favorite. Season 4 setting; one reference to season 7. Shameless smut. Kitchen sex. Fingering. The usual.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How It's Good

**Author's Note:**

> I used to write fic (centuries ago!) under another name and for other fandoms. SVU is brand-spankin' new to me but I thought I'd try my hand. Hope it works.

"You slept with Cabot?"

It feels weird and bad to say. Everything about this day feels weird and bad. They'd had their case lined up, the evidence in order, the kid returned to his father and the judge at the bench when the jail had called to say that their defendant was dead. Gotten dressed for court, done her makeup, hooked her neck to the bars of her cell with a length of pantyhose and sat down til she died. Didn't get a hair out of place. Coiffed herself, then offed herself, thinks Elliot humorlessly. It's weird. And bad. And now he's standing in his partner's kitchen trying to choke down the wine she likes to drink and she's just told him that she's slept with their ADA and he's not sure how much more surreal the day can get.

Olivia sighs and pinches the bridge of her nose with three fingers. "Can you not make a big deal out of this?"

"Not make a — Liv. Are you kidding me? With _Cabot_."  He couldn't have seen that coming. He should have seen it coming.

_Did_ he see it coming?

He remembers that time Liv showed up to interrogation in heels and a sleeveless black sheath dress, straight from an undercover collar at the symphony hall, and Alex's patrician jawline had gone a little slack at the sight. But he'd made himself look away, because he wasn't innocent of ogling either (who wasn't? hell, even Cragen had looked impressed) and the way Alex peered over her glasses to rake Liv from tip to toe distracted him from the computer nerd with a stalking habit who was blubbering on the other side of the one-way mirror.

So, yeah. He'd seen it coming. 

"Are you gonna tell me why?" he demands, wishing the wine were vodka. This was not a conversation he wanted to have sober.

"It was a rough case, El!" she exclaims. "And I don't have a wife to go home to!"

He gets it, a little. Sometimes, despite all the work they do as detectives, the perps go free because the victim is too young or traumatized or comatose or, hell, too dead. Or because of the courts: warrants get refused, the goddamn lawyers turn everything inside out, corroborating witnesses don't show up or blow it on the stand. He can smell Liv's rage steaming off her skin on those days and he sees how that turns into wanting someone to fuck into oblivion. He feels it too. But it's not his wife he wants in those moments, and it sure as hell isn't _Cabot_. 

The granite of her countertop is cool and he grips it with both hands. If he wants to be honest with himself — and he really, really doesn't — it's Liv. He wants the woman who always has his back but who can't walk next to him without elbowing him in the side, who can finish his sentences and his french fries and his coffee and not fuck up when his life's on the line or in the crosshairs and who can handle all of his scars and what IAB likes to call his anger management problems. Some days they come out of an aquittal into the cold light of the courthouse and he looks at her and wonders what she would taste like. Surely she'd taste better than the barrel of his gun, which is what he'd otherwise like to stick his tongue in.

He can't believe she went to _Cabot_. He likes their ADA as much as the next guy (which is to say, not that much, but she works hard and that counts for something) but she's cold and clean and law-abiding and if he knows Liv — and he really, really wants to think he does — then she probably wants mess and anger and a hot fight to the finish line to erase the shit of their worst days. Oh, Benson, she's not what you need.

"Excuse me?"

He clears his throat and releases the countertop. He hadn't quite realized he'd said that aloud. "She's not what you need. She doesn't _get_ you, Liv."

She huffs a laugh at him, undoing the buttons at the end of her sleeves. He stares at her forearms and thinks very briefly about what it would feel like to cuff her sleek wrists. "We only had sex, El. You don't have to —" she makes air quotes — " _get_ someone to have sex with them."

Only had sex. Alex and Liv _had sex_. The pictures in his head that he's been ignoring since their pre-interrogation eyefuck slide into focus again and he thinks fingers, heat, skin, Liv's cropped dark hair tangled in Alex's slim hand. Olivia coming underneath another body. Olivia coming, in general. His partner, who still has a gun holstered at her hip and is looking at his face as he thinks about her coming. Maybe she'll shoot him for it and this can all be over.

"Yeah, well." He's amazed his voice doesn't crack. "I hear it helps." 

She laughs again, a little incredulous, and turns to re-cork the wine bottle behind her. "By your standards, no one is ever going to get me enough to fuck me like they should."

" _I_ get you."

It comes out like gravel and he immediately regrets it.  

She doesn't move for a long moment. Both her palms are pressed to the countertop and he can see the tension in her shoulders.  

"Like I said," she says darkly, "I'm not the one with a wife to go home to." 

Inhale, exhale. 

"You gonna tell me what that's supposed to mean?" 

She picks up the bottle, looks at the label without reading it, puts it back down with a clink on the counter and doesn't face him. Pauses. "You know what it means." 

"Just tell me." 

Still not turning around. "It means that when _you_ have a shit day there's a warm body in bed waiting for you at the end of it." Her voice is low.  

"It means more than that." 

"Yeah, it does, El." She shoves the cork back in the mouth of the bottle with more force than necessary. "You really wanna talk about that now?" 

The heat expanding through his chest makes him feel dangerous. "I do." 

Liv rubs the back of her neck with one hand. At first he hated it when she cut her hair short. When it was longer it would swing towards him when she thumped into the passenger seat of the squad car, and he'd catch a whiff of mint and soap, and on cue his blood pressure would go down enough for him to rev up the engine and go after whatever monster was on their docket. 

That stopped happening when she cut it, and it pissed him off. But then he discovered that it gave him the freedom to (carefully, if Fin and Cragen weren't around — Munch has never given a shit) lean over her with the pretense of looking at something on her desk and rest his hand on the bare skin the cut had exposed, feeling how perfectly the slim nape of her neck fit into the span of his grip.  

His palm itches, and when she puts her hand back down on the counter he comes up behind her and settles his own in its place. He can feel her breathing, steadily. He's still waiting for her to talk. "Come on, Liv," he murmurs, letting his his thumb stroke soothingly along the soft side of her throat.  

"It means —" her eyes close. "That as much as I want to, I'm not going to jeopardize your marriage because I need to fuck when the shit hits the fan." 

_Wow._   

"So you go to Cabot." 

"I _went_ to Cabot. Once." 

"Without telling me." He's trying not to sound accusatory but his thumb stops moving. 

"Yeah, El, without telling you. What was I supposed to say? 'Excuse me, Detective Stabler, but a perp just walked because his victim is comatose and our only witness invoked spousal privilege, and in the interest of not blowing my brains out or drowning myself in whiskey, I'm going to have sex with our assistant district attorney.' Yeah, that would have gone over real well with you." 

He grins. He does it because she knows he's jealous of every person who's ever had their hands on her, and that means they're on the same page in this screwed-up conversation. He steps closer to her, feeling her body heat radiate out towards him, and tightens his grip on her neck. "You got that right," he says softly, almost in her ear. "I probably would have decked Cabot at the first opportunity, and that never looks good in front of the brass." 

"Don't even think about touching her, Elliot," she snaps.  

He raises his eyebrows. "Oh, so now she matters?" 

"Unless you've got a better option of someone for me to get it on with on days like this, you're not going to mess her up." 

_I do have a better option,_ he wants to say, _and it's me_. A wave of frustration rushes through him. He wants to shake her by the nape of her neck, the way you'd shake a kitten. "Ah, hell, Liv." 

"Shut it, Elliot." She sounds tired and angry. "Go home. There's nothing more you can do here tonight. Go home, sleep with your wife. I can handle another night thinking about kidnapped babies and suicidal hookers. I do it often enough." 

He releases her neck but doesn't step away. He likes the closeness. "Are you trying to make me feel guilty?" 

"For being married? No." _For sticking to your marriage vows like an obstinate bastard, despite the fact that you can't look your wife in the face most nights? Probably_. "Go _home_ , El." 

He backs off, then. His coat is still on her couch where he threw it when he came in. As he slides into it he watches her drum her fingers on the counter and worry her lower lip between her teeth.  

"You sure you'll be okay?" 

"I'll be fine," she says tersely. 

He has enough respect to take her word for it, at least, and heads for the door. He's reaching for the handle when he hears her flip open her phone and start dialing. 

"Liv." 

"What." 

"... who are you calling?" 

She cocks her head around the doorway from the kitchen and looks at him. The phone is already at her ear and she says "Alex," like it should be obvious. 

Oh no. Oh, no no. 

That is not happening right now. He is not letting her call Alex so she can come over and the two of them can _have sex_ while Elliot drives himself alone back to Queens. Not after that conversation. There's nothing Alex can do for her that he can't do better. He releases the doorknob and before he knows it is crossing the livingroom to her and pulling the phone out of her hand and pushing her back into the kitchen, up against the fridge, and kissing her hard.  

Her lips part instantly. She tastes like her crap wine and the Lipton she drinks by the gallon and she smells like her Liv-smell, mint and leather and talcum and wood polish, and she doesn't resist him at _all,_ she just gives, and it's glorious to feel her all warm and pliable and pinned down, even though he's only got one hand pressing her hips into the fridge because the other one is still holding her phone. 

Her goddamn phone. They can both hear it ringing, and ringing, and he prays for it to go to voicemail as he tips her jaw back with his nose so he can get at her neck. She's breathing hard against his temple. "Fuck it, Cabot, don't pick up," he whispers, keeping one eye on the screen and working his thigh between Liv's.  

That must jinx it, because they both hear Alex's warm tenor come faintly over the line at that moment. "Olivia?"  

She snatches the phone out of his hand and he swears silently, repeatedly, thumping his forehead lightly on her shoulder. She clears her throat before holding the phone to her ear and answering. "Hey, Alex." 

"Tell her you misdialed," orders Elliot. With both hands free he can tug her up and sideways so she's on her toes and straddling one of his hips. He can feel her heat even through their two sets of pants and she's not lying about needing this.  

Their faces are close enough together that when Alex says, "is everything okay?", he can hear the smile and the sexual invitation behind it. He might actually deck her next time he sees her, but for now he's just going to start undoing the buttons on Liv's shirt. 

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine, just —" Olivia's breath hitches as he presses an open-mouthed kiss to her sternum. "Um. Thought I'd see how you were doing?" 

Is she joking? She and the ADA are actually going to talk about their feelings right now? He pulls back to look at her, eyebrows raised. "I'm fine too," Alex's voice says. "Bizarre resolution to that case, though. The D.A. told me..."  

"Hang up," says Elliot, and Liv actually shushes him with a tap of her index finger on his lips. Like he's not undressing her, for crying out loud. He reaches around her arm to undo one more button and there is a merciful God in heaven because her bra clasps in the front and he unhooks it and without preamble strokes his fingers over her nipple and her breath does more than hitch now. Cabot is still nattering on about legal precedent and what the kid's father's options are and he says it again, louder, closer to the mouthpiece and closer to her mouth: "Hang. Up." 

She glares at him and he bucks into her — a _you really want to be ignoring_ this _right now? —_ and is rewarded with a flutter of her eyelids. On the other end of the line Alex sighs in tandem and it's kind of appropriate. "Anyway, I don't mean to ramble. Olivia... did you want me to come over?" 

There's a moment then where Olivia doesn't answer and just looks him right in the eyes. He's got one hand on her breast and another about to start undoing her pants and he's married and they're partners and she's on the phone with the last woman she fucked and this is weird and good, but that's better than weird and bad, and she just says "no, Alex, I'm good, just wanted to check in," and doesn't look away from him. It's victorious. It's stunning. It feels better than a collar. 

He'll think about the implications of that later. 

"Okay, then. I'll see you tomorrow," says the woman on the phone.  

"Thanks." 

Alex hangs up. 

Olivia pulls the phone away from her ear a little and keeps staring at him with those big dark eyes of hers. He knows he could, right now, like in the next fifteen seconds, make her feel really, really good before she has the chance to reconsider what it is they're doing here. But they're sex crimes detectives, for Chrissake, and if he can't ask for consent then he's even more of a asshole than everyone says he is. He can feel the brushed metal of her refrigerator door radiating coolness and it slows him down. 

"You want this?" 

She swallows. Her gaze flicks from his eyes to his mouth down to his hands, the one he slid inside her shirt and the other with two fingers hooked in behind her belt, and back up again. He's careful to remain very, very still. It's hard. Her skin is warm and smooth and he feels her heart thumping underneath his fingers. His thigh is starting to ache from keeping her up against the fridge. She exhales slowly and he feels it across his cheek. 

He's afraid she'll say no. He's more afraid of her not giving him a clear yes and going along with it anyway. He knows he's got that weird bit of ownership over her, that tiny edge of authority, that might make that happen. So although he (really, _really_ ) wants to shove his hand down her pants, she needs to want it too. He sighs and presses his forehead to hers. "Olivia. You want this, you gotta say it." 

Her lips part slightly, and she waits a beat, then snaps the phone shut. Her voice is rough. "Yeah. I want this." 

_Okay, then_.  

He moves fast, gripping her at ribcage and hip so she's on her feet and twisting her hips flush against his. He gets himself untangled out of her clothing and starts kissing her again while popping off the last of her shirt buttons with a series of sharp yanks — it's a power move, wrecking her clothes, and he knows it and she knows it but whatever — and trying to slide out of his coat at the same time. She helps, tugging him out of one sleeve. She's still holding her cell in the other hand. 

"Put down the damn phone, Liv," he mutters against her mouth, nipping her a little.  

"What if Alex calls back?" she murmurs, smiling. 

He shakes his coat off and bucks into her again, more meaningfully this time. " _Fuck_ Alex." 

"Already did, El." 

He makes a noise that sounds like a snarl and drags his knuckles down her stomach to her waist, feeling the soft skin rasp under his calluses, and starts undoing her belt. "I don't wanna hear about it." 

"You sure?" She's pushing all his buttons, getting him jealous and pissed. "You don't want to hear about how we —" 

He unzips her pants and looks into her eyes. " _Olivia_. Put down the phone. You're gonna need both hands." 

"For —?" 

Elliot keeps his eyes locked on hers as he sinks to his knees, dragging her belt and slacks and underwear (black lace, what a nice touch, if those were for Alex he'll put his fist through his locker) down with him. "To hold on." 

"Hold on to —" 

He shoulders her thighs apart. Really, there should be foreplay. He should tease her, leave a couple bite marks on the soft skin inside her knees (he skims the pad of his thumb over it), and take her to her bedroom to finish the job. But he's good with his mouth, and he's never been good at waiting, so he braces his forearms against her thighs and just leans in and gets to work.  

Suspicions confirmed. She tastes a lot better than gunmetal. 

Above him he hears Liv exhale, and when he glances up she's staring hard at the air above his head and bracing herself against the fridge. She kind of looks the way she does when she's thinking about a case, and that's not quite what he was hoping for, but when he shifts his weight and gets a little deeper her lips part and she buckles, eyes fluttering shut. He shifts one arm up across her hipbone to hold her upright and laves her clit. "Oh, _shit_ , El," she gasps. The phone hits the floor next to him with a thunk, battery popping out the back, and she catches her weight with her hands on his shoulders.  

He pulls back and grins up at her. She's backlit and undone, pupils blown. "I _told_ you to hold on." 

 "Shut up." She gets one hand around the nape of his neck and tugs him back in. "Do something more useful than talking — _oh_ —" 

While he gets busy figuring out her sweet spots and memorizing the way she tastes, he moves the hand that's not holding her up and gently, carefully, works two fingers inside of her. Above him she swears, tightly, and there's a thud that must be the back of her head landing against the refrigerator door. She's warm and slippery and it makes him dizzy. He'd expected her to be a little less compliant, a little more difficult to work up, but, no, just a few minutes and he's got her figured. Or maybe it's that he already knows her so well that the figuring was easy.  

Or _maybe_ it's that she's been desperate, so fucking desperate for him to get inside her and drive out the poison of their work that anything would do. Even Alex. As a substitute. When she thought he wouldn't do this for her.  

_That's_ a nice realization to have. 

He breaks away to catch his breath and then smirks, fanning his hand across her stomach. "You went to Cabot because you couldn't get me, didn't you." 

She looks down at him. "You're choosing this moment to bolster your ego?" 

He licks the juncture of her hip and thigh, holding her gaze. "Just stating the facts." 

She whacks the top of his head. "Think whatever you want, just don't _stop_." 

He laughs and leans back in, sliding his tongue across her and crooking his fingers, and she jerks and bites her lip. "You're not denying it," he points out. 

His ribs are right in line with her knee and she gets him with a good solid thump then. "Maybe I went to Cabot because she's better at this than you are. Keep going." 

"Bull _shit_ , Olivia," he says in a rumble, dragging his fingers out of her and slicking them wetly across her hipbone. "She never made you feel like this." 

"Can't prove it," she retorts. 

"I will fucking prove it," he says, and gets his hand under her bare thigh and pulls it over his shoulder. Her hands go to the back of his neck, grip curling into hard muscle, and he wills her to leave bruises. He wants her to fight him, to mark him. "You won't be able to walk straight when we're done — you never came from _her_ like that —" 

"You just didn't notice," she hisses, and jumps when he bites the wet streak his fingers left on her hip. Not too hard; just enough to remind her that just because he's on his knees for her doesn't mean he's not in control. 

"She didn't treat you right." With her leg hooked over his shoulder the angle's good and he can get his hand in on the action again. "Tomorrow, I swear, you're gonna walk in to the station house and Fin's gonna know, Munch is gonna know, Cabot is _definitely_ gonna know. I might tell her myself. She will _never_ touch you again." 

Okay, so he's being a possessive asshole, but whatever. Payback for all the times she's left him in the dust. Chasing after perps without backup, shutting him out when the victims get to her, going off and doing her own thing, acting like she doesn't need him. He's her partner, for fuck's sake. For fuck's sake and for better and for worse.  

He can feel himself getting angry and he _knows_ , he _knows_ it's not healthy or sane or safe to bring anger into sex, but this is Liv all slick and hot and salty-sweet in his mouth, and he's never been anything besides dangerous where she's involved. And he just wants to _wreck_ her. 

"One of these days you should tell me why you just love to act like you own me," she snarls, but she's breathless with it and her dark eyes are all heat and she is _so_ wet. "That shit get you off, El?" 

"Yeah, it does," he throws back. "But right now I'm getting _you_ off, so unless there's something you want to say about that —" 

Her eyes snap shut and her hips arch towards him. "Fucking hell, shut _up_ —"  

He looks up at her face and, oh, yeah. He sits up off his heels, gets his other hand around the nape of her neck again and pulls so that her face is inches from his. "You gonna come for me, huh?" he whispers against her mouth. He goes deep, gets fast and rough with it, and she grits her teeth. Her grip on him is iron but the muscles in her legs are shaking. "Come on, Liv," he coaxes, "do it —" 

She's so close. He can feel it, in the way she's breathing fast and getting tight and that sweet mint-and-baby powder smell of hers has gotten a little musky and it's so nice and she's going to come for him, right, right now — 

She presses her face into the side of his neck and does, hard.  

It's up there with the most amazing moments of his life: Olivia Benson coming on his hand, dewed with sweat and whimpering against his throat as he works her over. He can feel each wave as it hits, leaving her trembling, and when she finally breaks she makes a noise that sounds a little like his name and a little like a sob, and he feels like a goddamn king. 

He rubs circles into the back of her neck as she comes down, her panted breaths hot on his skin. Eventually she makes a sound of discomfort and nudges his forearm and he knows enough to slide his fingers out of her, change his grip and tug her down onto his thighs. 

His knees creak with relief as he takes his weight off them to sit back against her cabinets. She straddles his hips and keeps her face buried in his shoulder, so it's up to him to gently disentangle her from her shirt and bra. When her wrists are freed from her sleeves she lets out a massive, shaky sigh and tucks her arms in against his chest. He breathes, ignores his aching cock, runs a hand gently up and down her spine, and thinks about ways to get Cabot transferred to Narcotics. 

Liv was right, of course. (Isn't she always?) He gets off on owning her. He loves that he made her come without even having to undo his shirt. He loves — he presses his lips to her temple — this moment right now, where she's warm and bare and wrung out and curled in his lap amongst the mess on her kitchen floor (phone and battery cracked apart, her shoes and pants in a puddle at the base of the fridge, shirt buttons strewn everywhere) and so clearly _belonging_ to him. It's all the more precious because he knows it won't last.  

And it doesn't. Eventually she tilts her head away from his shoulder and clears her throat.  

"I liked that shirt." 

Of all the things to _say_. She's got his teeth marks on her hipbones and she's just had what he will swear is one of the best orgasms of her life and she's gonna bitch him out for wrecking her shirt? He'll remember that line for the rest of his life and three years later after she abandons their partnership and he gets in a fistfight over her she'll say it again, eyes ironic, standing at the door of the locker room and watching him get dressed, and he'll want to kill her or fuck her for it — but he doesn't know that now, so he just says "yeah, well, it looks better on your floor." 

It's cheesy and she chuckles. "So does my phone, huh?" 

"I _told_ you..." 

She stretches out, and she's never been graceful but right now she's pretty catlike. "Save it," she says, and reaching above her uses the edge of the counter to help herself to standing. 

Elliot watches as she walks through her kitchen barefoot and unselfconscious, picking up her gun belt, the pieces of her phone, and the torn shirt. She disappears into her bedroom and comes back a moment later, and he feels a profound sense of regret when she's pulled a faded NYPD tee on.  

She props her hip against the doorway, and there's a long moment where they're just looking at each other. His fingers are still just a little tacky and he can feel a faint bruise coming in on the back of his neck. Her mascara is smudged and her eyes are sleepy. Her legs are long and tanned and he can see the curves of her hips under the hem of the shirt. He hasn't forgotten his hard-on, and the way he's sitting splayed on the floor where she left him, there's no way she hasn't seen it. 

It's his turn to clear his throat. "Are you going to ask me to stay?" 

She grins, crosses her arms over her chest. "Not on your life."  

He almost laughs. Of course not. She knows him here too, that there's something about keeping his clothes on that equates to keeping his marriage vows intact, and that he'll suffer his arousal as penance.  

For now.  

She doesn't help him off the floor, doesn't suggest that he wash his hands or rinse his mouth before going home to his wife — he thinks about both, doesn't do either — doesn't get his coat for him, just leans against the doorway as he moves through her apartment. She watches him, and when he's straightened himself out a little and put on his coat, he feels sure enough to meet her gaze. 

Maybe it's a sin but it's right for him to do this for her. To be the one to take care of her like this. And she's calmer now, unwound from the tension in the squad room, and so is he. "Get some sleep," he says. 

She follows him towards the door. "I will." 

When he's out in the cool hallway of her apartment building, he turns and stops her from closing the door with one hand. If he doesn't say it it will eat at him. "I don't want you calling Cabot again." 

She raises an eyebrow at him. "That's not for you to decide." 

It _is_ , he thinks, but doesn't say so. "The next time we have a shit day and you need — this, you call _me_." He looks right at her as he says it and to her credit, or to his, she doesn't look away, and even nods slowly, once. 

He returns the nod and lets her shut the door. 

 

It's not until he's in the car halfway to Queens and stuck at a red light that he presses the heels of his hands into his eyes and tries to process it. He runs his tongue over his lips and he can still taste her. After a few dizzy moments of unsuccessful self-analysis ended by the impatient honking of the driver behind him, he puts his foot on the gas and concludes: it's weird, but good. Fuck, how it's good. 

 

 

 


End file.
